Problem 384. Poker Series 08: IsPair

The Poker Series consists of many short, well defined functions that when combined will lead to complex behavior. Our goal is to create a function that will take two hand matrices (defined below) and return the winning hand.

A hand matrix is 4x13 binary matrix showing the cards that are available for a poker player to use. This program will be expandable to use 5 card hands through 52 card hands! Suits of the cards are all equally ranked, so they only matter for determination of flushes (and straight flushes).

For each challenge, you should feel free to reuse your solutions from prior challenges in the series. To break this problem into smaller pieces, I am likely making architectural choices that are sub-optimal for speed. This is being done as an exercise in coding. The larger goal of this project can likely be done in a much faster, but more obscure way.

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A pair is 2 cards of the same rank (column) and the three kickers. The Ace (first column) is highest. The columns represent A, 2, 3, ... K. The next three highest cards are the kickers. If the kickers also form a pair, or three of a kind, it is still considered a pair for the purposes of this function.

This hand matrix:

0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

represents a pair, so the return value from the function is TRUE.

This hand matrix does not:

0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

so the return value should be FALSE.

This hand matrix does represent a pair

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

Remember, hand matrices can contain any number of 1's from 0 to 52.

0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1
0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 

Would be TRUE for this function.

A second output argument should come from this function. It is a usedCards Matrix. It is of the same form as the hand matrix, but it only shows the cards used to make the pair. If more than one pair can be made, return the higher ranking one (the one with the highest rank. Ace being the highest). If different suits are possible for the same pair, return the one higher up in the matrix, same for kickers. If the pair happens to also be a four of a kind or full house, two pair, etc.. it still meets the defintion and should be returned.